Firenzeee.....lots of ART!

---

Florence

Woooow so I am really behind on this! I've only been in Florence for two weeks but I have done so much already and been so many places! And of course seen lots of art! After finally arriving here, we had two days of orientation. Extremely boring! Luckily I got to get out of some of the most boring parts because I had already done the orientation in Rome.

But so many of the people here are from California! Or at least they go to Cal Poly. Definitely a change from Rome, where there was only one other girl from California! There are also more people here in the program though. I really like all my roommates though. Four of them go to Cal Poly and one of them goes to Cal, but I didn't know her before. Two of them are also from Norcal, and one of them swam with Auker and knows Heather as well!

Sooo lets see what else. Our school is located in Piazza della Repubblica, which is very close to the Duomo, in the center. Not far at all from my apartment, which is nice! It is a little bit smaller than the Rome campus though. I also liked the set up in Rome better, but I think thats because they had more room there. For part of the orientation though we had a short walking tour of Florence. We went through lots of little back streets, as well as saw Piazza della Signoria where Palazzo Vecchio, the main gov't building is located, and where there is a sculpture garden and the Neptune Fountain. We also saw a small little church, which I forget the name, and some towers that belonged to the rich families of Florence. There used to be many more of these towers, but only some exist today. However they have all these holes in them because boards were placed out on people's balconies so that you could connect the towers high up, and in a sense have a walkway above the street, so that people wouldn't have to go down the tower and then go to the next tower and walk all the way up. Interesting! We also saw the Ponte Vecchio, the famous pedestrian bridge in Florence. It is lined with only jewelry shops, lots of gold and silver.

So the first little activity they had set up for us was an aperitivo at this place called Oibò. It was a very cute place, right on the corner of Piazza Santa Croce. Aperitivo is a new fad in Florence, apparently everyone does it. Many bars have it, and what it is basically is you just buy one drink and then there is all this food that comes with it. Not a lot of the food was vegan, but I was able to have some yummy foccacia and some pasta. Its a cute idea though and I definitely liked it! The place had an upstairs and downstairs, as well as seating outside. Its typically a before dinner activity, but it could definitely be a light meal. It was enough of a meal for me...but of course Italians find some way to get more food in after!

On Thursday we had our first day of classes. We only had one day of class that week, which was a little random, but nice at the same time. I am taking one class, the History of Art of the High Renaissance. My teacher is crazy!!! She has a funny accent because she is German, but she speaks Italian and English too. She is really really crazy though. Definitely entertaining, and she will definitely make art history, which could easily be really boring, and interesting subject! She yells and stomps and changes her tone of voice every second and is all in your face sometimes. Haha its great though. Definitely wakes you up since I have the class in the morning! The class sounds awesome though. We will be taking lots of excursions and going out into the city a lot to see all the art that the city has to offer. On our first day we went out to see The Last Supper by Andrea Castagno. That was cool!

Castello di Verrazzano

Then that friday we went wine tasting at Castello di Verrazzano. We took an hour bus ride into the Chianti countryside and then arrived at this gorgeous winery. Views were awesome of course! Lots of greenery, and lots of hills. It was really nice! A good change from the city, which is literally all concrete. No green areas, except on the outskirts of the cities. But anyways, so Verrazzano, this guy discovered New York way back in the day, and this was his house/castle here. We got a tour of the cellars by this guy Gino Rosi, who was awesome, and saw the gigantic barrels that they age the wine in. Here I learned that a huge part of the taste of the wine depends on what type of wood is used for the barrel! I never knew that. I also learned about Chianti wine, which they do make at this place. They follow a specific recipe with a specific percentage of diff. types of grapes.

We also saw lots of rooms with their wines on reserve. The reserve wine is aged for a longer time and typically has a higher alcohol content. I also learned that red wine vinegar literally does come from red wine! It is basically wine that has gone sour/bad, and has been in contact with too much oxygen.

After the tour of the cellars we had lunch and wine tasting. We learned the proper way to pour the wine, and how you start with the people to the right of you. We learned the proper way to taste as well, and how you swirl it and smell it, but don't smell too much of it or the alcohol will get to your head! We also learned how you hold it up to a white surface to see how the light goes through it etc. We tried three wines in all I think, one white and two red, one was the reserve. My favorite was the white. Then we had a multi-course meal which was soooo yummy! My food was awesome, and everyone had wished they had asked for vegan food! We also had a desert wine after for dipping biscotti in, but I didn't really drink that because it was really strong and I didn't have any biscotti to dip it in. They we took pictures with the gorgeous countryside and bought some wine, and then took the bus back. Of course we all passed out on the bus!

Siena

Then the next day we did a day trip to Siena and San Gimignamo. Siena was cool because they were in the middle of their horse races, the Palio. They do one race in July and one in August. Each neighborhood, or contrada is represented and the horses race around the central piazza, Piazza del Campo. It is crazy, and very dangerous. It is hugely important for them though apparently, and there is a lot of pride associated with the race. It was cool because I had learned all about this in my Living Italy class in Rome, and then I got to see Siena and really understand everything. In Siena we saw the Piazza del Campo, which is a weird shell shape, and the Fonte Gaia which is in the center. We also saw Palazzo Pubblico, and went inside, and Torre del Mangia. We saw some awesome frescoes inside, of course a lot of them were political, and had an art historian to describe it all to us.

Another important part of Siena is their patron saint, St. Catherine of Siena. There is one church, the church of San Domenico which is dedicated to her and actually has her head their preserved on an altar. It is her REAL head, not like a plaster mold of it or anything. I guess they just keep embalming it to preserve it.

We also saw Siena's duomo, which originally was planned to be larger than Florence's, as Florence and Siena were traditionally competitors, but it was never fully completed. It was still very big though. It is called Santa Maria dell'Assunta. We also saw the Museo dell'Opera dell'Duomo, which had an array of artworks and a tower to climb up with an awesome panoramic view. We had lunch in Siena, on Piazza del Campo and then took the bus to San Gimignamo.

San Gimignamo

I definitely liked San Gimignamo! They are known for all their towers. It was a cute little hill town. We went to the Collegiata, which is their main church, and got an explanation of the famous frescoes on the inside. Some of the frescoes were pretty gruesome, especially the one depicting the Last Judgement.

After this we had some time on our own, so my roommates and I walked up to an olive grove at the top of the city, as recommended by Rick Steves. It had gorgeous views and it was cool to see the olive trees. Then we got gelato at this place that was supposedly the world champion of gelato for 2006-2007. It was definitely yummy! I had lemon and rosemary-raspberry. Then we bused back to Siena. That night me and my roommates walked up to Forte Belvedere, which is the Fort up on a hill on the other side of the Arno. It has a bar up there and a little dance floor. Its an outside venue and is one of the places where all the Italians like to hang out. There is one girl here that did the program here in June as well, so she knows the city and is the one that took us up there! The view was gorgeous of course. It was awesome to see Florence all lit up at night!

Pisa

The next day my roommates and I trained to Pisa and Lucca. We went to Pisa first, and took a walk through the town to the main square, Campo dei Fiori. This was really cool! Here is where the leaning tower of Pisa is, as well as their duomo, baptistery, cemetary, and a museum. We went inside the duomo and cemetary and baptistery, guided by Rick Steves. Then I climbed the leaning tower! My roommates didn't but they took pictures of me up there from below. When you are climbing it though you can definitely feel the lean on the stairs! I thougt though that the tower was going to be a lot larger than it actually was. In pictures it always looks big, but it actually wasn't much taller than their duomo. And of course we had to take pictures with tower, with us leaning/pushing it etc. It was actually really funny to be in this piazza because all you see are all these tourists with their hands up in the air and people surrounding taking pictures of them! It was a hilarious sight and I took lots of pictures of them, because they really all just look silly doing that. We didn't really see much more of Siena, minus Campo dei Fiori and whatever we saw on our walking tour. Then we walked back to the train station and trained to Lucca.

Lucca

It was a Sunday, so Lucca was a little bit more deserted. I like the town though! We saw the piazza where the Roman amphitheatre used to be in Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, and lunched there. We didn't see any museums or churches in Lucca, as we thought we had had our share of those, but instead decided to climb two towers. We climbed their clock tower, Torre delle ore, as well as Torre Giungi. On the top of Torre Giungi there was a little garden that we hung out in for a while and enjoyed the breeze, as well as the surrounding hills. Lucca has a lot of greenery surrounding the walls, which was nice to enjoy! After this we walked along the main streets and explored those for a bit, and then went to the outskirts of town and rented bikes! We rode the bikes along the Ramparts; basically we were riding on top of the city walls. This was nice and enjoyable! This is also where all the people were, lots of people were walking or on bikes or hanging out at the parks along the Ramparts. Then we trained back to Florence and fell asleep early after a long weekend!

Then we had our first full week of school...I will give you an update on that later though!

---